In general, old people aren't as physically strong as young people. What they have, though, is "tensile strength" - the ability to hold onto things for a long time, to grip something with a vice-like clutch and never let it go.
Young people may excel in feats of dynamic strength - they can lift heavy things and drag pieces of furniture around a room - but when it comes to wrapping a set of bony fingers around an object and holding on for dear life, they're rank amateurs. Old people have them licked in the grasping and enduring department.
Unfortunately for me, as a man in his upper 40s who lives and works in Hollywood, I'm an old person. I like to think I still have some dynamic feats of strength left in me, but if I'm really honest with myself I have to admit that lately I've noticed my abilities turning towards the holding and clutching.
Which makes sense. As we get older we tend to have a hard time letting things go, both physically and metaphorically. And to all of you young folks reading this with a smug sense of superiority, remember this: we all get old. Hairlines recede, waistlines expand, memories get fuzzy, joints creak - it happens to all of us and it will happen to you. In fact, it's probably already happening.
Here's an example: do you remember the classic film, The Karate Kid? Ralph Macchio plays a boy who learns the values of discipline and self-reliance from a wise karate master, played by Pat Morita. The film was released the year I graduated from high school. I remember everything about seeing it the first time: I remember the smell of the cinema, the friends I saw it with, even the "coming attractions" trailers that played before it began. The movie and the cast are locked in a permanent freeze-frame for me: Ralph Macchio is The Kid, Pat Morita is Mr Miyagi the teacher, and I'm a young man about to head off to college.
Except for this: everyone gets old. Ralph Macchio is now as old as Pat Morita was when he played Mr Miyagi, and back then Mr Miyagi seemed very, very old. Which means that Ralph Macchio is very, very old. Which means that I must be very, very, very old.
I'd like to shake off that realisation, but I can't. I keep holding onto it, with the tensile strength of the elderly codger that I am.
A writer friend of mine in his mid-30s was working on a project with some writers in their mid-20s. Naturally, this was a very irritating state of affairs, as anyone who works with 20-year-olds can tell you. People in their 20s tend, on the whole, to believe that the world was created sometime between the invention of Facebook and when Twitter started to get really big. I mean, they know that stuff happened before that, they just don't think it was very interesting.
During a story conference, my friend made a reference to the classic comedy Animal House. Do you remember that one? It's set in the late 1950s about a very rambunctious university fraternity. When the movie was released in the 1970s it was an instant smash hit.
It's the kind of movie that comedy writers are just supposed to know. It's part of the canon. But my friend just got blank stares. The young writers hadn't seen it. But what was worse, they weren't even familiar with the movie at all. The basic outlines of the plot and setting were a total mystery to them. They were comedy writers who hadn't seen or heard of one of the biggest comedies ever made.
Four days later, a couple of them approached the writer and announced that over the weekend, they had watched the movie.
"What did you think?" he asked.
They shrugged.
"Kinda slow," they said. "Not all that funny."
That's one of the advantages of having all of that dynamic strength: you can lift up the monuments of the past and just chuck them away.
"But the movie probably appeals more to your generation," they added helpfully.
"My generation?" my friend asked, his voice rising in elderly outrage. "I'm 36; you guys are 25. We're not that far apart."
The young people rolled their eyes. Old people are always saying things like that, they seemed to say. Old people are always denying their age. Old people are always calling things from their past "classics". Silly old people. Let's remember never to be like that.
Good luck, my young friends.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
